A Dynamic Programming Model for Organisational Designing

Organisational design problems have been formulated as that of minimising personnel related costs subject to some constraints with a heuristics as solution procedures. The difficulty of verifying the effectiveness of such heuristics in producing optimal organisation structures has created model acceptability problems. The objective of this study is to develop an organisational design algorithm that guarantee optimal organisational structure with minimum personnel related costs. The model was applied to an organisations design problem of an existing firm. The study provides a methodology for assessing the effectiveness of the existing heuristics. Keywords: Organisational design, Organisational structure, Optimal organisation, Personnel cost Dynamic programming

A Personnel Cost Model for Organisational Structure Design

In this paper, a business organisation’s personnel related cost function was developed in terms of number of managers (NM), span of control (SC) per manager, number of supervisors (NS) and number of management levels (ML) as variables while number of lowest cadre of staff; rate of pay and allowances, working hours and human interaction dynamics factors were the parameters. Based on this, business organisational design problem was formulated and solved as nonlinear constrained optimization problem with the minimization of total personnel related operating costs, as the objective as the objective function. A solution methodology was produced and an example problem solved. Keywords: Organisational design, Organisational structure, Optimal organisation, Personnel cost mode

A quatitative approach for establishing safe weight of lift

The objective of this work was to formulate a mathematical model for predicting a safe weight of lift. Considering the intratruncal pressure, post-work height shrinkage of the worker and strain energy of the intervertebral disc, the SWL function was derived in terms of the Young Modulus of elasticity (E) of the articular cartilage (endplate of the disc); velocity of lift (u); acceleration due to gravity (g); vertical location of the load (V); horizontal length of the load from the ankles (H); vertical displacement of the load (D); the angle of lift ("theta") and the lifter’s anthropometric dimensions. To evaluate the function for a particular individual, the value of the length of the spine from the first thoracic to the last lumbar vertebrae, the heights just before the start and after the close of work were measured to determine the height shrinkage. Additionally, the breadth and depth of the trunk were measured. A range of values of the function parameters: V, H and D were adopted from National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), while E and U were also taken from the literature. SWL values were computed and compared to those of the Recommended Weight Limit (RWL) of NIOSH and Maximum Acceptable Weight of Lift (MAWL) from the literature. At an average height shrinkage of 0.014 m and a maximum permissible shrinkage of 0.21 m, the SWL and SWLMax values were significantly different (at 95% level confidence) from the corresponding RWL and the MAWL values